Russia’s latest bombardment of Ukraine’s preeminent Black Sea port city damaged a Chinese diplomatic facility, officials in Beijing and Kyiv confirmed.
“An explosion happened near China’s Consulate-General in Odessa. The blast wave shook off parts of the wall surface and windowpanes,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Thursday. “We will take all measures necessary to keep Chinese institutions and nationals safe in Ukraine.”
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That measured statement emphasized that the incident caused no injuries because Chinese diplomats “had long left the premises.” If the communist regime’s initial statement on the facility “being shaken by [a] Russian airstrike” adopted a passive tone, Ukrainian officials nonetheless pressed the incident as an example of Russian aggression running athwart of China’s interests.
“July 19: Russia destroyed 60,000 tons of Ukrainian grain, some of which was supposed to have been exported to the PRC,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov tweeted. “July 20: the building of the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China, located in the middle of a residential area, was damaged as a result of a Russian missile and drone attack on Odesa.”
Russian forces “fired 38 projectiles: 19 cruise missiles and 19 kamikaze drones” at Ukrainian port cities overnight, continuing a recent wave of attacks that has coincided with the Kremlin’s announcement that Russia would terminate the deal that permitted exports of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea. Those attacks left one young man dead in Odesa and killed another in Mykolaiv, as Ukrainian officials said that air defenses succeeded in intercepting just 18 of the incoming munitions.
“The Russians hit the city center. A garage and a three-story residential building caught fire,” Mykolaiv regional Gov. Vitaliy Kim said, per Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “A total of 18 people were injured. Nine of them were hospitalized, including five children, while two people were rescued from under the rubble. It’s a miracle that we managed to save them.”
The ordnance that damaged the Chinese consulate struck a local bank, according to a Ukrainian foreign policy expert who lives in Odesa, a world heritage city registered with the United Nations. “It is a historical center which is under UNESCO protection,” Dr. Hanna Shelest, an Odesa-based nonresident senior fellow for the Center for European Policy Analysis, told the Washington Examiner.
Ukrainian officials emphasized that point in a new appeal for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to censure the Russian state.
“The buildings of a number of museums were damaged in Odesa and at least one monument in Mykolaiv was completely destroyed,” Ukrainian culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko wrote, according to Ukrainian media. “I urge UNESCO to name the aggressor, once again rethink their role in the governing bodies of the organization and the effectiveness of the organization given the presence of Russia there.”
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Russian forces intensified their attacks on the cities while attempting to constrict Ukrainian grain exports, as part of an apparent effort to press United States and European officials to ease some of the sanctions imposed last year in retaliation for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“About a million tons of food is stored in the ports that were attacked today. This is the volume that should have been delivered to consumer countries in Africa and Asia long ago,” Zelensky said Wednesday in his evening address. “That is, everyone is affected by this Russian terror. Everyone in the world should be interested in bringing Russia to justice for its terror.”
